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Sunday, November 13, 2011

What's the proper way to grieve?

Death surrounds me a lot this weekend. Has forced me to consider mourning. How each person mourns in a different way. Caused me to consider how I mourn.

One friend, a long dear friend, lost her 1 day old son. She's reached out to friends on Facebook sharing her grief and thanking those for support. A normally very private person she's reached out in this way. As if to gather strength from the numerous comments that reach across oceans and miles. And for her maybe that is how she will heal by drawing on that strength found in reaching out.

Another, special woman to me, her friend died. While she told me she also expressed her desire not to talk. She then texted she'd wrote 3k for Nano and cleaned her garage. Later her husband took her shopping. All this to keep her busy. To allow herself distraction until the time was right and she could process her grief.

Once again this caused me to consider. "How do I mourn?" Mourning is not limited to death. It can be financial loss, a contrite spirit for mistakes made, generally any disappointment.

I think I use a combination of my two friends. Depending on what specifically happened would determine my course. However, a key element, the cornerstone for me and my two friends as well is our faith...a faith we all share.

7 comments:

good question...i don't know how to answer. i was so distraught when cindy died and i thought once the initial sharpness of the pain eased that was the end of my grieving. i have realized, almost 13 years later, that i still grieve and it happens at different times. when there's something i wanna share and cindy is the only one that will get it without any extra explanation. i guess for me the grief never ends it just rears it's head at different times. i allow myself to wallow in the grief and then try to move on past it. the living have to live and let the ones who have passed, rest in peace.

A couple of years ago, I lost my brother. Unexpected and shocking, I still gireive, and agree with both the previous comment. It hits you when you least expect it too, and at times i can be almost reflective. What startled me the most as I am normally an even-tempered kind of person, is th raging anger at the time, which all this time later can still suddenly errupt from nowehere. (anger for me equals shouting and the like.I don't like myself much during those times.Grief is not something that will let you shut it away in a box for ever. And yes everyone experiences it differently.

I'm coming up on the anniversary of my friends death next week. She called herself my first fan, and I have a smiling picture of us together up in my writing room. I have a lot of questions still, and I think I get contemplative, but I will go down to the lake where we spend countless hours together next week and light a candle at the edge of the water and have a glass of wine, think of her.

I lost my sister to a car accident in may of 2009. She was only 35. I read an excerpt from Laura Kaye's North of Need. The heroine is a widow and is talking about how hard the holidays are, how after the 1st year everyone expects you to move on, I can so relate, this will be our 3rd Christmas since we lost Sam, and I HAVE moved on. But, that doesn't mean I don't still miss her or want to talk about her, It doesn't mean that her loss doesn't just "hit" me at times for no reason. I still miss her. I always will.

In a way, I don't think we ever stop grieving. I've only lost three people close to me or important to me. My grandparents and my little brother, who I never new because he was born at 23 weeks gestation. Sometimes, it's smelling something or a certain feeling you have in the air, or a vulnerability that transports you back to the time you lost them. My husband always says that he knows how much my grandfather meant to me because I never talk about him much. Since I'm such an open book, it's almost like I keep those little memories all to myself. I share so much with everyone, those are the precious few things that belong only to me.

But you're right. It's different from everyone and is sort of something that is based on our upbringing and what we see others do. And it's also a "selfish" thing. Grieving is something that's only for US and no one can tell us what's right or wrong or how to do it. It might be a trial and error process, too.

Personally, I know I'll always have a deep grief that my grandfather never saw my children or I didn't do or say a certain thing before he passed. So in that respect, grief will always be with me. But the passage of time is a gift that dulls the pain and helps us to move on.

We become reflective, for some it's the thought that it is ever-present in our lives. Death, just as our reactions to it, is as unique as a snowflake. I lost my brother back in the 90s and I won't deny that I let it influence my writing, my themes and thoughts. It will always be part of me. We just have to take it on faith that we're making the right choices.